


Sequel

by Jocelyn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Becket Family Feels, Drift Compatibility, Drift Side Effects, FEELS DAMMIT!, Gen, Jaeger Academy, Jaeger Pilots, Kaiju (Pacific Rim), Sibling Rivalry, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5478659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jocelyn/pseuds/Jocelyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Raleigh and Yancy Becket became Jaeger pilots, their sister Jazmine felt left behind.  She had a plan in 2020 to join the Jaeger Academy and try to find someone to bond with in the drift.  Then came Knifehead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merriman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazmine Becket is called to the Anchorage Shatterdome on February 29, 2020 to face news even worse than she ever imagined: only one of her brothers has returned.

**Sequel**

**Part I**

_February 29, 2020…  
Anchorage Shatterdome…_

Jazmine Becket came through the visitor entrance of Anchorage Shatterdome at a dead run. She tried to shove her way through the milling crew of Gipsy Danger, only to plow headlong into Tendo Choi.

"Hey, watch it!" someone yelled.  "No press entries - oh, God." 

As she and Tendo steadied themselves, all Jazmine saw were red-rimmed eyes and ashen faces and deer-in-the-headlights stares.  _"It's bad,_ " Tendo had told her on the phone.  _"Gipsy is still on her feet, but it's bad."_

Before she had made it to the Shatterdome, she heard the search alerts going out, and seen the boats and helicopters streaming out of the harbor into the Gulf of Alaska.  Yancy Becket was missing.  Any and all volunteers and search personnel available were asked to help.

 

* * *

 

Twelve hours ago, she'd been so annoyed to get a text from Yancy at 3 am:  _Deploying.  Make sure your kaiju alert radio is on._

She'd grumbled and rolled over in bed, only to get another one ten minutes later.  _Turn on your fucking alert radio, Jazz! Kaiju off Anchorage!_

_Jerk_.  Kaiju swam all over the Pacific before they decided what city they wanted to attack, and they almost never went for the most northern targets.  She wasn't going to drag herself out of her nice, comfy bed and go hide in a freezing, standing-room-only shelter for hours only to find out that the kaiju had made landfall in Vancouver again.

She hadn't texted him back; she'd been too annoyed that he kept waking her up.  _You go out in the freezing rain in the middle of the night,_ she’d thought. _Serves you right._ And she’d gone back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Now he was missing.  "Raleigh?"

Tendo visibly marshaled himself and put an arm around her shoulders.  "Infirmary.  Come on.  He'll be okay, but he's... well, you can guess.  He's not in a good place."

Talk about the understatement of the century. 

It was no secret that Jazmine and her middle brother tended to butt heads.  Only a year apart, they'd been competitive kids who'd gone through long stretches of frigid silence and snarling vitriol in high school.  The worst of it had actually been the year before Yamarashi.  A part of her had hated Raleigh for being drift compatible with Yancy, leaving her in their uncle's care after their mom died and their dad walked out. She had feared Yancy would never have time for his sister again.  She knew how Jaeger pilots got, wrapped up in each other with no interest in anyone else, consumed by a telepathic bond.  Her brothers had that with each other, and where did that leave her?

She'd gotten over it - or at least made the decision to pretend it didn't bother her - after Yamarashi _._ Huddled on her bedroom floor at Uncle Charlie's house, she couldn't listen to or watch the broadcasts once she found out Gipsy Danger was going to fight. She’d rocked back and forth in Charlie's arms, swinging between panic and despair and numbness.  _What if they're hurt what if they die what if I never see them again?_

The PPDC had flown her to Los Angeles afterward, and Raleigh and Yance had sandwiched her between them while she tried not to have a complete meltdown.  She and Raleigh had reconciled, more or less, and Yancy had promised to always text her before they deployed.  To her surprise, he'd understood her deepest fear, the one that went beyond just fearing her brothers would both be killed:

_"We're not gonna forget about you, Jazz,”_ he’d said. “ _I promise.  You're what we're fighting for.  You're the last person we always see when we start drifting._ "

She had melted down again when they showed her their quarters in the LA Shatterdome, with bunk beds like when they were little kids, but with her picture right in the middle of the collage next to their door. 

After that, she'd made peace with knowing Yancy would always be closer to Raleigh than he was to her.  Her brothers were out saving cities and killing invading aliens, and they hadn't forgotten her.  She could live with that.  Living with the possibility of losing them in a fight was harder.  She took advantage of the PPDC Family Psychological Support that was available to all Rangers' loved ones, and tried not to think about it too much.

She'd never imagined that the day might come when only one of her brothers would make it back.

 

* * *

 

On February 29, 2020, Raleigh was the first person who dared to say it.  In the hospital bed, his arm splinted and stitches visible going up into his hairline, he stared at Jazmine and whispered, "He's dead."

Tendo caught Jazmine from behind before she could fall, and he steered her into a chair.  "Kiddo, they're still looking," he insisted.  "It's not too late."

Raleigh's eyes were glazed from whatever medication they had him on, but they focused on Jazmine.  Bleak, empty.  Raleigh knew.  He'd seen it.  In the drift, he'd felt it. 

_Yance?  No...no, please don't be gone.  Please come back.  What do we do now?_

She didn't know what to do.  She didn't know what to say.  She put a hand on Raleigh's unhurt right hand just for something to do. He didn't answer her grip.  He stopped looking at her as the hours crept by. Sometimes she got the feeling that he'd forgotten she was there.

Tendo came and went, always giving Jazmine a squeeze around the shoulders and Raleigh a gentle pat on the arm.  Always he murmured, "The search is still going.  Hang in there."

Lots of Gipsy Danger's crew visited.  Jazmine knew most of them by now.  Even Marshal Pentecost came in, greeting her quietly and asking if there was anything she needed.  She just shook her head, and he nodded and left them alone.  Raleigh didn't look at him.  He didn't look at anyone. 

The doctors said, "He has a concussion, some fractured ribs, and a hairline fracture of the left humerus - the upper arm.  There's some internal bleeding, but nothing severe.  He'll recover completely in a few months."

They didn't tell her what drugs they were putting in Raleigh's IV, and she didn't ask.  Probably painkillers and some kind of sedative that made him sleep as the afternoon wore on.  If they hadn't sedated him, Jazmine doubted he would have slept or done anything except stare at nothing with that haunted, hopeless expression.

Sun and shadows moved across the walls and floor from the small window.  Raleigh drifted in and out of consciousness without making a sound.  An orderly brought Jazmine meal trays and hovered until she forced herself to finish at least half the food. 

The sun went down.  Jazmine looked at the clock and saw crew peering through the door with increasingly anguished faces.

She was no expert, but she could figure it out:  _It's dark now.  It's cold.  He fell into the water in the Gulf.  If he's alive at all, he won't be much longer unless someone finds him soon._

Raleigh didn't think he was alive.  Maybe Raleigh was wrong.  In the chaos of a battle and the injuries they'd both have had when the conn-pod was ripped open and Yancy fell, maybe Raleigh just didn't understand what had happened...

Marshal Pentecost came in.  Jazmine might not have registered anything terrible coming, but for the first time, she felt Raleigh squeeze her hand.  She looked down and saw tears sliding down her brother's face.  And Marshal Pentecost... Raleigh and Yancy used to refer to him as the Man of Steel.  He was always so composed, so dignified.  Jazmine wouldn't have ever imagined seeing him look so sad.

"Ranger Becket.  Miss Becket."  He came quietly to Jazmine's side, but spoke mostly to Raleigh.  "I am so deeply sorry. The search is going on, and it will continue for as long as we have volunteers and personnel available.  But... I'm afraid the medical staff are all in agreement that your brother could not have survived."

For almost five years, Jazmine had braced herself for words like this.  She dreamed about hearing this and woke up screaming and crying.  Now, hearing it in reality, for only one of her brothers, the lump of lead in her stomach turned molten and searing hot, like she would burn up from the inside out.  But there was no urge to scream like she'd once imagined.  Tears burned out of her eyes, but her sobs were quiet and slow, almost easy.

Was it because she'd had all day to sit here and come to terms with it?  Was it because Raleigh was still here, so she wasn't left completely alone?  She didn't know, and in the end, she couldn't muster the energy to try to work it out. She put her head down on Raleigh's pillow and felt, she thought, him rub his cheek against her hair. 

_We both got along better with Yance.  I guess we had that much in common._ He'd want them to get along now, of course.  Jazmine had no doubt about that.  So she carefully put an arm across Raleigh and just held him, as close as she could manage.  Raleigh was all she had now.  She was all Raleigh had.  They'd lost Maman and Dad, and somehow the world kept on turning.  The sun would come up tomorrow no matter how much they wished it wouldn’t. So they'd just have to deal.

 

* * *

 

  _March 1, 2020…_

Uncle Charlie arrived during the early hours of the next morning.  He was exhausted; he'd driven all the way from Mayo in Yukon without stopping.  The medics and some of Gipsy Danger's crew seized the opportunity to wheedle and tug Jazmine out of the infirmary to sleep in the guest room they'd given her.  "Rals isn't gonna wake up before morning," Tendo said after consulting the medics.  "One of us can sit with him overnight, but you two can't go without sleep.  You're gonna need it."

Charlie sat up in Jazmine's room until she fell asleep.

When she woke up, the world hadn't ended, so she went back to the infirmary and sat with Raleigh, and just waited for what would come next.

There wasn't much on the first day.  Crew tiptoed in and out to hug Jazmine and whisper their condolences and tried not to cry in front of her or Raleigh.  They stroked Raleigh's hair and spoke to Charlie in hushed voices about practical stuff like survivor's benefits.  Sometimes, Jazmine tried to pay attention.  Other times, she heard the word "funeral" and did her best to tune it all out.

The medics tried to bring Raleigh into a discussion of what they'd do once he was discharged from the infirmary. "I'll take them both home with me," Charlie began, but Raleigh shook his head.  "You want to stay on the base?" Another headshake.  "Where, then?"

It seemed to take a few minutes for Raleigh to muster the energy to answer.  "Dunno.  Somewhere else."

"Rals, you can't just wander off," Tendo said, but Raleigh wouldn't look at him.   

_That’s exactly what he plans to do,_ an old, bitter part of Jazmine observed. _Just like Dad. Yancy was the only thing that kept Raleigh in the family. It’s not like he gives a damn about me._

When Raleigh met her eyes at last, however, she knew it wasn’t anything so simple. He looked like he was staring at her from the bottom of a hole that led straight to hell, with no idea how to climb out. “’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Jazz.” That was all he said out loud, but Jazmine was suddenly sure that she knew what he wanted to say, or rather, scream: _It was my fault it was my fault I’m sorry he’s gone and it’s all my fault._

“It isn’t your fault,” she told him. That got her some odd looks from Tendo and Charlie and the medics. It was weird that she’d say that when she couldn’t even stand to hear anyone talk about what had actually happened in the fight. All Jazmine knew was that Yance had been ripped out of the conn-pod and Raleigh had finished the kaiju alone, then walked Gipsy to shore. “I’m not letting you just give up.” _For Yance. He’d go crazy if you just crawled away to die. I won’t let you do that._

She could rarely provoke Raleigh into anything other than storming rage in the past, but suddenly their roles were reversed: Raleigh cried. The medics let him, and Jazmine didn’t need to be a shrink to figure out why. He needed to cry. It lasted a long time, and she abandoned her chair to sit on the side of his bed, leaning over his pillow and rubbing his good arm.

Charlie came up behind her and put a hand on each of them. “You’re gonna get through this. Both of you. You’ll make him proud.” Jazmine sobbed then too, but she didn’t let go of Raleigh.

After a long time, they both wound down, and Raleigh fell asleep without needing to be sedated, while Jazmine just slumped in a drained stupor against his uninjured side. Charlie patted her head, smoothing down her disheveled hair. “You hadn’t told them your plan, had you?”

She shook her head. “I was waiting ‘till after the alert was over, in case…” she had to stop and swallow past the lump in her throat again. “In case Yance freaked out.”

She hadn’t been sure if Yance and Raleigh would be pleased and proud, worried and doubtful, or just dismissive. Well, the last one she’d thought more likely of Raleigh, but on the other hand, Yancy would have been the most likely to panic and try to change her mind when she told them she was applying to the Jaeger Academy.

The timing had to be right, because the first time she applied, they would find out even if she didn’t pass initial screening. And Jazmine had no intention of failing the screening and opening herself up to Raleigh’s judgment _or_ Yancy’s overprotectiveness. Once she was admitted, it was a done deal, and active duty Rangers couldn’t interfere with an Academy cadet’s progression. Lots of people were drift compatible with someone other than family. She couldn’t help imagining that maybe she’d find what Raleigh and Yancy had, even if she couldn’t have it with her older brother like Raleigh did.

Charlie voiced the possibility first, while it was still floating around in a haze of shock and confusion and grief, too vague and distant for Jazmine to focus on. “You should think about… carrying on with it. If not this June, then maybe 2021, once we’ve got Raleigh settled. I think… well, we both know Yancy’d fret.” Now he had to pause and take a few breaths, patting her shoulder a bit compulsively as he looked away. He finished in a low, rough voice. “I think in the end, he’d be very proud of you.”

Jazmine sat up and switched positions to bury her face into her uncle’s chest and cry all over again. _I love you, Yance. I wish I could tell you just once. Just to be sure you knew it._ She’d said it to them both after Yamarashi, sent it in texts for their deployments… each one up until Knifehead. _I wish you were here so I could tell you I’ve been studying and training for the Academy screening because I wanted to be like you and make a difference like you. I wish you’d come back so you could see I’m grown up and ready to join the war effort. I wish I could tell you it was all because of you. I wish you’d just come back so everything could be different._

Forty-eight hours later, four days after her brother Yancy was declared dead, somehow, she got her wish.

_**To Be Continued...** _


	2. Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yancy lives. Jazmine carries out her plan to attend the Jaeger Academy, but with Yancy permanently grounded, Gipsy Danger's future is uncertain, and the PPDC thinks they know the perfect solution.

**Part II**

_March 3, 2020…_

If Stacker had had a choice, he would not have allowed any of the Becket family _or_ Gipsy Danger’s crew to know why he suddenly rushed out of the Shatterdome. But the message, garbled by a weak radio signal and a lot of confused people trying to translate it, passed far too many ears before it reached his, and others began to put the facts together.

Ilisapie Flint of Chrome Brutus was the first Ranger to know. She spoke Inuit fluently and had collected the native languages since her early teens. Stacker hated to ask her for help in translating a message they both knew was likely to be painful, but he couldn’t make out the caller’s language.

“They’re calling from Tyonek,” she told him. Stacker placed it on the map, a tiny village some forty miles west of Anchorage, population less than two hundred. Perhaps after four days of tide and wind, Yancy’s body had come ashore there. He tried not to contemplate that for too long –

\- Ilisapie nearly dropped the radio handset. Stacker stared, and she stared at the radio as if it had transformed into a kaiju claw. He saw the blood drain from her face. “Flint?”

She hissed a question, and the man on the other end answered, his voice urgent. She repeated the question, and he repeated the answer. Her breath caught, and her eyes met Stacker’s. In an instant, Stacker knew. She spoke it in a whisper, fearful of anyone else in LOCCENT overhearing. “Sir… they say he’s alive.”

For a moment, they both just stared at each other. Then Stacker turned and made for the door. Ilisapie barked a few words into the radio, then came running after him. “Stay here,” he muttered absently.

“And how the hell are you going to communicate with them once you get there?”

Fair point. “It may be a hoax.”

“Then I’ll help you find the bastards who staged it.” The possibility was real. It wouldn’t be the first time some consciousless profiteer or Internet troll had exploited dead or injured Rangers for money or notoriety, and the search for Yancy’s body would be a ripe opportunity.

Before they even reached the helipad, Tendo Choi came tearing down the hall, wild-eyed. “Sir, there’s a report saying - ”

“Lock down the external channels and get all reporters off the base,” Stacker snapped. “Under _no circumstances_ is this to reach them.” No need to clarify who he meant by “them.” “We will not be party to torturing them if it turns out to be false.”

“Yessir,” Tendo croaked.

“I’m going myself with Ranger Flint. We’ll update once we know the facts.” Stacker paused on the doorway to the helipad and pointed at Tendo. “God help anyone who lets this slip in Raleigh’s hearing.”

Tendo lost his frenzy and gave a grim nod, and was already jogging back down the hall when the doors closed behind them.

* * *

It was not a hoax.

Stacker and Ilisapie came off the chopper into the largest crowd that a little settlement like Tyonek, Alaska had ever seen. Stacker knew that there was no chance the rumors could be isolated. Stacker would have to trust Tendo back at the Shatterdome to keep the Beckets from being taunted with false hope. 

There was no hospital in the town, only a one-room clinic wedged into the front of one of the dock warehouses.  A cluster of men and women were gathered on top of it wrestling with a radio antennae that looked like it had been in service since the 1960s.  The closer Stacker and Ilisapie got to the building, the less English he heard, but there was some Russian flying around, and Ilisapie and the medic they'd brought with them had some of the Inuit dialects.  All the mingling bystanders pointed at the clinic.

Outside the doors was a group of burly men, suspicious of so many strangers descending on their home.  They beckoned Stacker and Ilisapie through even as they barred the onlookers. 

Once through the clinic doors, Stacker stopped in his tracks, and Ilisapie and the medic both rushed forward.

It was Yancy Becket.

Yancy was alive. He was still clad in most of his armor, strapped to a makeshift backboard/stretcher and swathed in bandages. A boy about Raleigh Becket's age was monitoring the IV apparatus that had been strapped to the wall.  Two haggard looking men and a woman were monitoring the whole operation.  Judging by the emptied first aid kits and boxes scattered on the floor, these people had exhausted what meager medical supplies they had.

The female medic spoke a little Russian and tried to explain the situation to Ilisapie, but not getting anywhere. Stacker stepped closer to try his own limited Russian, then saw Yancy's face and caught his breath.

Yancy was awake.  He was looking at them.

Stacker forgot everything and knelt at his pilot's side.  Yancy was in agony.  "What painkillers did you bring?" he asked his own medic.

"Not much, and their supplies are tapped out.  I've called a full medical lift.  They should be here within the hour."

"Ral-eigh?" Yancy rasped.

If Raleigh believed his brother was dead due to what they'd experienced in the drift that night... what did Yancy remember?  Stacker bent close to Yancy's face and said urgently, "Raleigh is alive.  He's safe, I swear to you.  You will both recover."

Yancy sobbed and tried to turn his head, but the medics held him.  "Stay still, Yancy.  I know this hurts.  We'll have you taken care of soon."

Stacker touched Yancy's head gently and stood to rejoin Ilisapie and see what progress she'd made.  "Do we have any idea of his condition?"

Ilisapie had assembled the woman, the boy, and a couple of local fishermen into an _I-Love-Lucy_ -esque translation line between English, Russian, and no less than three different native dialects, but they were starting to filter out the facts.  "The group that found him is outside.  They say they're fishermen, but the locals doubt it.  Their boat is a little too reinforced and has the wrong equipment.  They seem awfully worried about going to jail."

_Illegal salvagers.  Kaiju parts, probably._   "When did they find him?"

"Early that morning.  They saw the fight and moved in as soon as Gipsy moved away.  They had a lot of wave damage, only partial engines, no radio by the time it was over." Ilisapie gave Stacker a wry look that said she had the same suspicions as him.  "To their credit, once they found him, they started heading for shore, but it was almost two days before they came in here. He stopped breathing at least once."

"What's his condition now?"

"A lot of broken bones, probably internal injuries.  They were smart to leave his armor on once they knew he wasn't bleeding out, to keep his limbs in place."

The PPDC medic stood and muttered in Stacker's ear, "I know we'd all rather have him back at the Shatterdome, but once serious treatment starts, he could crash.  I'd like him at Anchorage General, the ICU. We can't lose him now."

Outside, Stacker heard the rotors of a big chopper arriving.  "Get his brother and sister to the hospital.  I want them there when we arrive."

* * *

When Tendo told Jazmine and Raleigh why they were going to the hospital, Raleigh didn't believe him.

“Guys…they found Yance. He’s alive. He came ashore in the middle of nowhere, so it took them days to get a message out, but he’s alive!”  
  
Jazmine and Raleigh just stared at him. He had to repeat it twice before it sank in, then she just moved on autopilot. She wasn't sure if Charlie believed it or not, but he helped her and Tendo wrangle her listless brother onto the helicopter.  If the medics hadn't tranquilized him before breaking the news, Jazmine suspected he'd have put up a fight. He was just… confused.

"But I felt it," Raleigh kept whispering.  "I felt him die."

"The guys who found him had to do CPR on him twice," said Tendo thickly, rubbing Raleigh's hands.  "People can crash and come back, kiddo. Maybe that’s what you felt."  If Raleigh understood that or thought it was possible, he didn't say.

Jazmine's heart hammered through the whole flight to downtown Anchorage.  Neither she nor her brothers were terribly religious, but she prayed.  _Please let this be real, please let him be there, please give us one more chance!_

The problem with getting that chance and getting her brother back, she quickly discovered, was that he only had eyes for Raleigh.

Raleigh almost collapsed when they got into the ICU and saw Yancy there in the bed and finally, _finally,_ knew it was real.  Charlie caught him from one side, Tendo by the other, leaving Jazmine behind them.  "Whoa!  Kiddo, kiddo, stay with me.  It's him, c'mon, Rals, it's okay!"

" _Raleigh?_ " 

Jazmine sobbed just from the sound of Yancy's voice.  The swarm of doctors and nurses in the room practically shoved Raleigh to Yancy's bedside.  Through all the movement, Jazmine could just see his face, puffy and swollen, but smiling as Raleigh cried over him. 

"I'm sorry, Rangers, I'm sorry, we have to get him into surgery.  The longer we wait, the higher the risk that his injuries are permanent," said a doctor, and Tendo and Charlie now had to drag Raleigh away. 

"'s okay, Rals," they heard Yancy say weakly. "Take it easy, I'll be okay." 

In a flurry of movement and chattering voices and the sound of Raleigh's sobs, Jazmine found herself next to her brother again outside the hospital room with the door shut again.  She saw the sign on the door and realized it wasn't a regular room: it was prep for emergency surgery.

"W-what’re they doing?  How bad is he?"

"We're not sure," Tendo admitted as Charlie pressed Raleigh into a chair.  "They don't think it's anything life-threatening, but he's got a lot of broken bones, maybe internal bleeding.  The most dangerous may be a ruptured spleen.  And they, uh..." he glanced back at Raleigh, who was still melting down in Charlie's arms, and tugged Jazmine gently away.  She held her breath.  "They're pretty sure he has spinal fractures.  That won't be fatal, but, y'know, breaking your back is pretty bad."

Jazmine's throat got tight again, but now it felt more like she was going to throw up.  "Will he... be paralyzed?"

"Dunno.  It's hard to tell with both legs so broken.  He had movement in his fingers a little."  Tendo tried and failed to smile and pulled Jazmine into his arms.  "Your big brother is a tough dude, Little Bit.  And a lucky one.  We may never know exactly what happened in between that motherf - I mean, Knifehead ripping open the conn-pod and those fishermen pulling him out of the water.  But he made it this far, and we're gonna get him through the rest.  You're all together again."  
  
The doctors got Yancy through it, but repeatedly warned Jazmine and Raleigh that he was in for a very long recovery.  "The injury to the spleen and abdomen wasn't as bad as we feared.  We took his appendix out, but as abdominal surgery goes, that's one of the milder options.  There will have to be more surgery for his bones.  His right leg and arm were shattered, and the other arm and leg have compound fractures.  He'll have enough metal in his bones to build a new Jaeger by this time next year."

Maybe it was drugs, shock, or both, but Raleigh was really slow on the uptake during those first days. Jazmine figured out what the doctor was trying to gently explain to them first:  "You mean that he... he can't ever pilot a Jaeger again.  Even if... I mean, when he is able to walk, it still won't be like he was before."

The doctor nodded.  Charlie squeezed Jazmine's shoulders, but as usual, everyone was watching Raleigh.  To her relief, he didn't melt down again.  To her surprise, for the first time, it was like he got his willpower back.  "Yeah, we kinda figured that part.  It's okay.  We'll get him through it."  He actually smiled at Tendo.  "We'll do something else for the war now.  We used to think about it.  Shit happens, pilots have to retire."  Tendo hugged him, and he muttered into the older man's shoulder, "The worst thing'll be if Gipsy goes to Oblivion Bay.  His heart'll break."

Jazmine found it easier then to sit down against Raleigh's left side, carefully patting his injured arm.  "Maybe you could go into design now.  Rebuild her from the ground up like they did Coyote Tango.”  

_Maybe I could pilot her. Carry on the legacy._ She didn’t say that. She wasn’t sure how either of her brothers would react.

* * *

_May 2020…_

With Uncle Charlie's approval (and cover) Jazmine slipped away to the Academy a few weeks later to take part in the screening tests. 

She took care to shower and change clothes after the grueling physical trials and always kept her study materials hidden under her bed, but to her complete surprise, one day after they'd seen Yance into his third surgery, Raleigh gave her a weary smile.  "It's okay, Sis.  I know where you've been going."

"Huh?"

For the first time since Knifehead, Raleigh grinned outright, looking more like the cocky, always-upbeat brother she remembered.  Relief made her throat tighten up as he jerked his head towards the window.  "You're pretty sneaky, but not so much.  You keep running off to catch the early ferry to Kodiak, and it's Academy application time.  If Yance wasn't doped to the gills, he'd have probably figured it out too." He glanced down at his phone, checking the date.  "It must be almost over.  You're still in?"  She nodded.  "Wow, you're doing good.  You're through all the physicals, then."

She shrugged, feeling awkward.  "I've still got the aptitude exam, and everyone says it's the hardest."

Raleigh hesitated, then said, "There's no rule that we can't give advice, so long as we're not sharing what's on this term's exams.  Aptitude's meant to be hard, but it's not so much about the score you get.  Yance and I scored really low, and I knew guys who scored even lower.  Some people didn't even get finished but still passed because they stayed right until the clock ran out.  It's about endurance."

No one had given her that hint before, but she hadn't had the nerve to ask any active duty crew for fear that word would get back to her brothers.  "Thanks.  D'you think... Yance will take it okay, that I'm applying?"

Raleigh looked away. His good mood had passed, and he looked exhausted and sad again.  "I don't know," he admitted softly.  "Normally... yeah, hell, yeah, he'd be proud as hell.  You know that, right?"  Unable to talk past the lump in her throat, she nodded.  "Right now... he won't be mad at you, I'm pretty sure of that, it's just...it may scare him, thinking of you going into combat when we can't back you up."

"Yeah, I kind of guessed that part.  I talked to your psych analysts about it," she confessed.  

"Figures," he grumbled. "We're permanently grounded and still assigned headshrinkers." But there was a playfulness to it, like she usually heard from Yancy.  "You realize if you really want to do this job, you'll spend the rest of your life getting analyzed out the wazoo too."

Jazmine shrugged.  "I get that already just because I'm your sister.  I figured I might as well go all the way."

* * *

  Yancy had always been the calmest Becket sibling, so his quietness when they told him Jazmine had been accepted to the Jaeger Academy shouldn't have been alarming.  If only they hadn't known just how many narcotics were still getting pumped into him, nearly three months since he'd been pulled out of the Gulf of Alaska.  He smiled and squeezed Jazmine's hand with his one working hand (the left hand).

"You'll do good, Jazz.  I know it.  Just passing screening is a big win.  Maybe by the time the trimester's up, I'll actually be able to give you some useful advice."

That sounded a little more like him.  He was upbeat through Jazmine's departure for the start of the term, despite knowing she'd be gone for a full nine weeks.  But Raleigh hovered discreetly where Yance couldn't see him - until he heard his brother's breath hitching.  Then he came back, so they'd both know there was no chance Yancy could hide it.

"Sorry," Yance whispered as Raleigh wiped his face.

"What for?  It wasn't your fault."

Even doped within an inch of his life, Yancy could still read Raleigh far too well.  "It wasn't yours either."

Yance couldn't sit up or even lift his one good arm from the shoulder.  Only the elbow and below in his left arm had somehow managed to come away from Knifehead unbroken.  Raleigh could easily avoid being in arm's reach of him... but that would just be shitty.  And as shitty as he felt these days about being reasonably hale and mobile while Yancy was neither, he wasn't going to add to it by hurting his brother.  So he let Yancy pet his head and say what they'd both been thinking for months: "It's over, kiddo."

"I know."  _Is that okay?  Did we do everything we could've done?  Five kills, that's nothing to sneeze at, and we both came out of it alive... barely.  Is it supposed to feel like we let everyone down?_

The war wasn't over.  But apparently it was for them, and Raleigh had no idea how they were supposed to feel now, let alone what they were supposed to do.

* * *

_Our job is to keep involved in the war, in any way we can,_ Yancy told himself.  _I shouldn't just sit around and feel sorry for myself._

Well, in practice, "sitting around" was all he could do for the time being, because the surgeons were still piecing the bones of his lower body together.  By the time Jazmine was coming up on the end of the Jaeger Academy's first trimester, Yancy's arms and collarbone were healing to the point where he could at least take care of basic necessities mostly without the aid of someone else.  He could operate his bed to "sit up," and he and Raleigh had the routine to get him in and out of a wheelchair.

It wasn't much, but it was progress.  Physical therapy kept his brain and body preoccupied - usually through copious amounts of pain, but oh well. 

Somehow he still felt like he was looking after Raleigh.  Yancy's little brother was... different, since Knifehead.  It wasn't just the depression and pain that Yancy sensed in Raleigh's head.  The medics had warned that Raleigh had sustained brain damage from piloting solo and from the traumatic break in the drift. Nobody else really talked about it, and Raleigh didn't, but now that they were reunited, their ghost drift was still strong.  Yancy could feel it. 

The PPDC medics and psych analysts got whatever waivers they needed for Raleigh to stay in the hospital room for as long as Yancy was there, and if the civilian medics thought it was weird, they knew better than to say so.  (At least to Yancy or Raleigh's faces.)  Raleigh was quiet and distracted, sometimes sleeping more than he ever had before especially when Yancy was in surgery, according to Tendo and Charlie.  Other times, he exercised obsessively, doing push-ups and katas in their room until Yancy was sure he would just collapse.

As Yancy grew a little more mobile, the most he had to look forward to was leaving the hospital for some kind of assisted rehab facility.  The change of scenery would be welcome, but on the other hand, he'd be that much further from his life as a Ranger.  A bitter part of him wondered why he bothered resisting that.  It wasn't like he would ever have that life back again. 

"I'll be with you," Rals told him at one point, tapping into his maudlin thoughts.

"You don't have to be attached to my hip now, kid," he began, but that only earned him a scowl.

"Don't push me away, Yance."  Outwardly, his little brother just glared, but Yancy could feel everything he wasn't saying our showing the ghost drift:  the memory of terror and despair and complete hopelessness. _You were dead, you were DEAD, don't you fucking understand, I lost you and I was alone, and I'm never, ever letting you out of my sight again..._

"Rals.  C'mere, kiddo," he held out his good arm, and Raleigh slid from his chair, dropping down next to the bed and pressing his face into the mattress.  Yancy rubbed his neck and murmured, "It's okay.  I'm here, just breathe.  We're gonna be okay."

His memory of those days alone after the rescue was blurry and vague.  He'd scoured the ghost drift for Raleigh in every second that he'd been awake and lucid, but unlike Raleigh, he didn't have any memory of the moment that the drift had broken.  When Raleigh did sleep, nightmares plagued him. 

"We need to adjust, that's all.  Once I'm done with rehab, it'll get easier. We'll do something new for the war.  Teach, maybe, or work with Tendo in LOCCENT.  Cheer on whoever inherits Gipsy."

Raleigh clutched Yancy's wrist like a lifeline, but gradually, he calmed down.  "You think Gipsy will go back into service?" he sighed.

"Schoenfeld's convinced she can be repaired if they can get the funding.  Maybe we can lobby for it."  The politics of Ranger rock stardom wasn't a favorite part of the job for either of them, but if it would save Gipsy Danger from being consigned to Oblivion Bay, Yancy was prepared to stomach it.

* * *

It didn't come to that.  Representative Taylor and Secretary General Krieger had been making plans of their own while Yancy and Raleigh were in recovery, and before Jazmine could even get back on the ferry to tell them she'd passed the first cut, the story was in the media:

**_Heroic Beckets' Sister Jazmine to Fill Vacancy in Gipsy Danger?_ **

_Six months after beloved Ranger Yancy Becket, 24, suffered devastating injuries ending his career as a Jaeger pilot, his youngest sister, Jazmine Becket, 20 has passed the first cut at the Jaeger Academy.  Miss Becket is now eligible to train as a Jaeger pilot, and with her middle brother Raleigh now partnerless, sources within the Jaeger Program are hopeful that the great Gipsy Danger will remain a Becket family machine._

_"Severe injury to one of our servicemen is a tragedy, but it would be even worse to lose Raleigh Becket and the greatest Jaeger in service as well," said Michael Taylor, the US Representative to the PPDC.  "Training and testing for Jazmine Becket is still in progress, and repairs for the Jaeger will take time, but we have high hopes that she'll be a perfect fit._ "

Raleigh and Yancy were still digesting it when Jazmine arrived - with Marshal Pentecost. "I didn't know," she blurted.  "Nobody told me anything about this 'til now!"

Raleigh looked from her to Pentecost, who confirmed, "That's correct.  Although this...possibility has been under discussion, I had thought it was agreed that Miss Becket - pardon me, Cadet Becket - would complete drift compatibility testing and training with her class before it was broached."

"Do I not get a choice at all?" Raleigh muttered without thinking.  He felt Yancy wince, and saw Jazmine's hurt expression, and looked down.  "Sorry.  I just..." he shrugged helplessly at her.  _Come on, you and I were at each other's throats up until a few years ago. You really want to drift with me now?_   "I just don't know if I could... have someone else in my head.  Anybody else."  _Not after Yance.  Nobody could just replace him._

"You will both have a choice," said Pentecost.  He looked from Raleigh to Jazmine, waiting until each of them met his eyes.  "Whatever incentives or pressures may be exerted from outside, ultimately there is no outside party who can impose drift compatibility." 

Raleigh paced to the window just to give himself something to do. He made himself look at his sister. “Y’know I’d… help you anyway you need. It’d be awesome if you made Ranger, especially if that meant Gipsy could stay in service. But I… even if Medical clears me for full duty, that’s different from drifting again. A lot different. I don’t think I could do that again.”

Jazmine looked less wounded and nodded to Pentecost. “He said it was because Herc Hansen is Ranger Ready again with his son. That gave Taylor the idea to try the same thing with us.”

Raleigh vaguely remembered hearing something about Herc getting re-matched after Scott Hansen left the duty roster, but that had been the first half of 2020 while he and Yancy were both in the hospital. No one had talked about it in front of him. Still, whatever had happened between Herc and Scott hadn’t been like feeling a partner’s death in the drift.

Yancy, who’d just listened silently up to then, spoke up. “What happens to Gipsy if Raleigh and Jazz aren’t compatible? Will they scrap her?”

Pentecost hesitated, and Raleigh felt his brother wince. _Is this what it comes down to? As Yance and I go, so goes our Jaeger? Five kills and they just melt her down?_ “Sir, can we talk in private?” Yancy asked. Pentecost nodded and let himself out.

Raleigh stared at his brother, puzzled, with some vague sense of hurt bubbling in his chest.  "You don't...really think this is a good idea, do you?"  He wasn't trying to be mean to Jazmine, it was just... _but Yance, it was always you and me.  How can I drift with anybody else and leave you behind?_

_Kiddo..._ The ghost drift was fading after so many months apart.  Raleigh didn't want it to go, didn't want to lose the sense of his brother blended into his mind, to not be able to pick up Yancy's thoughts even when they weren't in the conn-pod.  If Yancy was thinking at him, it was only coming through as a vague sensation anymore. But Yancy's intentions were still coming through:  he didn't want Raleigh to dismiss it out of hand.

Raleigh really wasn't trying to make Jazmine feel bad.  He knew it wasn't her fault.  "You'd really want to be in my head?" he asked, trying and failing to smile.

"I just want to be a pilot," Jazmine said, her curt tone telling him that she was pissed at him.  "Sorry if you can't even put up with me to try and save Gipsy Danger."

"That's _not_ it - " Raleigh snapped, and Yancy barked at them.

"Hey!  Don't start.  The last six months have been shit for the whole family, okay?  We don't need you two going at each other's throats again."  To Raleigh's surprise, he leaned on Jazmine first.  "It's not because of you, Jazz. Knifehead...fucked us both up pretty bad.  I don't know what would happen if we even tried to drift with each other again, let alone somebody else."

Jazmine just looked confused.  Raleigh looked away and muttered, "He died."

"Almost, yeah, I know," she said, sounding like she thought he was being melodramatic.

_You don't get it, do you?  He_ died.  _I felt it.  I lived it.  He died and I can't stop remembering what it felt like._ His shoulders hunched and he couldn't turn around. He knew Yancy wanted to get up and hug him, but Yancy couldn't. His back was broken, his legs still shattered.  He hated himself sometimes for not being able to take care of Raleigh anymore, then Raleigh hated himself for Yancy feeling that way.

He was completely unprepared for the feel of another hand on his shoulder:  Jazmine's.  Maybe she'd gotten a hint from Yancy, but even then, that was a stretch for either of them.  Neither of them were used to getting comforted by each other - or trying to do it.  That was always Yancy's job, and neither of them would really have accepted it from anyone else.

"What's the worst that could happen?  We're not drift compatible, right?" Jazz asked.

Raleigh shook his head.  All the lectures and explanations from the first trimester at the Jaeger Academy hadn't prepared him and Yancy for the reality of drifting, and even with the insider information Jazmine had from them, he knew she couldn't really get it.  "The worst that happens is you get to carry around all these memories too, and they fuck your brain up as much as they've fucked up mine."

"Rals."  Yancy waited, as if he were mentally tugging on Raleigh's sleeve, until Raleigh turned around and met his eyes.  "We're not the only team to have a close call."  Understatement of the century and they both knew it, but Yancy kept calm amid Raleigh's surging emotions.  "We've still got a job to do.  She's right.  We should at least try." 

_We?  But if I do it, it'll just be Jazz and me, not you.  I can't do it without you._

_We don't know that._ "If testing doesn't work, we go on to Plan B.  Maybe start lobbying for the Corps to pair Jazz with someone else so we can keep Gipsy in service.  You and I... start training as instructors or support crew."  _We can't stay in limbo forever.  We won't be co-pilots anymore.  We have to move on._

_I don't want to._

_I know, kiddo.  Neither do I.  But it is what it is._ Yancy gave him a sad smile and nodded towards their sister, who stood silent, aware that a semi-telepathic conversation was going on.  _It might be easier than you think.  Give her a chance, little bro.  I'd feel better seeing you two stay together._

He was dissembling a little.  Raleigh knew that.  The thought of watching Raleigh and Jazmine launch in Gipsy while he stood back, grounded forever, was tearing Yancy up inside, but he was determined to deal with it like an adult.  _There you are with a broken back, still with a better attitude than me._

_**To Be Continued...** _


	3. Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raleigh and Jazmine each always got along better with Yancy than with each other. Now they must attempt to drift, and all three Beckets face an uncertain future.

**Part III**

_September 2020...  
Jaeger Academy Drift Sync Testing..._

After two weeks in the Kwoon, Jazmine and Raleigh were in the pons simulator.  She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not that Yancy wasn't there; the lab building hadn't been built with wheelchairs in mind. 

They were both nervous, and in the back of her mind, Jazmine wondered if they'd be able to drift at all.  _Raleigh doesn't want me.  He wants Yancy._ Could she really fault him for that?  Given the choice between her brothers, she'd have picked Yancy too.

The simulator thrummed to life, and reality dissolved.  Jazmine plunged into a world of liquid blue, faces, and voices. 

_She was six, dressed as the princess, and Yancy and Raleigh were her prince and her knight with cardboard swords..._

_She was eleven, playing monkey in the middle with her brothers, struggling with Raleigh to get the ball high enough to escape their taller brother when he was in the middle..._

_Yancy was in the middle as seven-year-old Jazmine and eight-year-old Raleigh screamed and clawed at each other, holding each of them at arm's length and yelling at them to break it up..._

_She was thirteen and crying because Raleigh'd said he'd tell Yancy to come to her party, but he'd forgotten..._

_He was fifteen, knees and elbows and awkwardness, and Jazmine had posted online about his crush on Samantha and the whole school was laughing at him..._

_She was sixteen and Kyle had broken up with her.  Yancy had hugged her while she cried but Raleigh hadn't said anything, so he probably didn't give a damn..._

_Raleigh heard Kyle making fun of Jazmine after breaking up with her in front of everyone in gym - he slammed Kyle against the wall and hissed, "Talk about my sister again and you'll have to wear a hockey mask to prom!"_

The handshake lurched, and they both lunged forward unconsciously in the lab rigs, coughing.  Jazmine blinked through bleary eyes to her right.  So this was the drift, seeing sides to her brother that she hadn't known existed. 

_She yelled at him at Maman's grave, thinking he was being blasé, but he wasn't..._

_He thought she was being dramatic when she cried, just making a bid for Yancy’s attention out of spite, but she wasn't..._

_There's one thing we've got in common, Sis, I guess we both always assume the worst about each other._ His after-image was in front of her in the drift, sizing her up the same way she was with him.  He looked so tired and sad. Only months ago he'd been on top of the world, one of the pilots of the best Jaeger team on Earth, and then it all went to hell -

_The conn-pod shook and their ears rang with the scream of tearing metal and Gipsy's warning alarms.  His arm, his arm was gone, screams of agony tore from his throat, but then he felt and saw the impact of gray-green claws puncturing through the right side of the pod, and Yancy looked wildly from it to him._

_"Raleigh, listen to me!  You have to - "  Terror, Yancy's terror, pain, panic - the drift surged with pain and shock and he was head over heels out of control out of the conn-pod, buffeted and battered and then -_

_Empty, gone, and Raleigh screamed as the full weight of the neural load and the empty space his brother had left behind bore down to crush him..._

"Deactivating handshake." 

"Jazmine!  Raleigh, easy, guys!  Easy, we got you!"

She/he swung drunkenly at the strangers in front of her, trying to arm the plasma cannon on her/his right hand, make that bastard pay, with no Yancy left, nothing to do but end it -

The test rig disengaged, and she crumbled forward, and it was the pain when her knees hit the simulator floor that finally got her back into the present.  It was September, and she was in the Jaeger Academy, and Yancy was alive...

_But he died.  Rals was right, it wasn't his imagination, Yancy_ died.  She wriggled free of the aide who was trying to steady her and crawled to the right.  Raleigh was huddled on the floor, only half-aware of the medics trying to help him; he was shivering. 

_It was so cold.  It was cold, and Yancy was dead, and Raleigh was dying.  All the way back to shore, he was alone in the conn-pod, his brain was crumbling from the neural load, and he was dying by inches._ She choked back a sob, and he blinked up at her.

"'m sorry, Jazz."  He hadn't meant for her to live through that with them. 

She helped him sit up, and they slumped on the floor between the medics and the techs and the test rig in a dazed embrace.  Kind of like Raleigh and Yancy had been after some of their roughest fights, too battered and drained to take more than a few steps from the rig. She remembered that now.  "It's okay.  It's okay."  She hadn't meant for him to have to relive it either. 

They heard one of the psych analysts talking to someone in the lab.  "I don't know if this can work, sir.  The Knifehead incident may just be too traumatic for them collectively.  Maybe Cadet Becket could manage with a different partner, but - "

" - no," she grunted, instinctively tightening her grip on Raleigh.  He blinked at her, and she was surprised herself.  _We're not done yet. Are we?_

"Cadet?"  It was Marshal Pentecost, watching them with his typical neutral face.  Next to him was Herc Hansen, and toward the back of the lab were several more pilots.

Raleigh pulled himself up straighter, his pride stung awake.  "We're not throwing in the towel just yet, sir.  We just need some - " He tried to get up, and Jazmine and the medics had to catch him as his legs refused to cooperate. "We'll try again, better prepared."

If Pentecost was skeptical, he didn't show it.  "Very well.  Report to your analysts' office for a review of this test tomorrow; take today to recover."  Then he noticed just how many non-pons personnel with in the room behind him and scowled.  "I don't recall sync testing being an audience event."  The other Rangers and crew scattered, muttering apologies.

"I think they were just trying to be supportive," Dr. Lightcap told Raleigh and Jazmine as they came wearily into the screening room. 

"We were, mate," said Herc, the only Ranger who had lingered.  He clapped Raleigh lightly on the shoulder and waved Jazmine down when she would have stood up.  "If it makes you feel better, it took Chuck and me a dozen tries to stop chasing rabbits."

Jazmine was surprised.  The general tone of the instructions she and the other candidates had been given was that if they couldn't make it into combat simulations after four or five tries, they'd be cut.  Obviously, Raleigh felt the same, and it showed on both their faces, because Herc looked between the two of them, then laughed.  "Yeah, 'special circumstances' - namely, the brass really wanted Team Hansen version 2.0.  I expect it'll be the same for you."

Dr. Lightcap rolled her eyes.  "And if you want encouragement that isn't completely cynical, I supported that 'special circumstance,' and it has nothing to do with public relations.  Adjusting to traumatic memories in the drift is always a challenge - doubly so for memories that were traumatic _while_ drifting with a previous partner.  So, yes, as long as they were willing to keep trying, I didn't lower the boom on Herc and Chuck, and the same will hold true for the two of you."

* * *

Yancy was waiting when Raleigh and Jazmine got back to their room. Nobody except Academy personnel were supposed to be in candidates' quarters, but even Marshal Pentecost looked the other way for Yancy. "How'd it go?" he asked.  It was a mostly-rhetorical question.  His little brother and sister both looked emotionally and physically wiped out.  

He wound up with a sibling on either side of his wheelchair, both doing their best to wrap themselves around him.  "You died," Jazmine choked out.  "You really died."

His throat tightened and his stomach churned, even though he'd known that it wouldn't be long before Jazmine got exposed to that memory.  _I don't remember dying.  But Raleigh does – from my head.  Ironic._ Raleigh and Jazmine had now died as Yancy Becket in the drift, but Yancy himself didn't remember his own death.  Unless he drifted with Raleigh again, he'd never know what death felt like.  "I'm sorry.  Maybe I shouldn't have pushed for you to try."

Jazmine scoffed and released him to get up and wipe her face.  "I'm not a china doll, Yance.  I made it past the first cut, and I'm not gonna just give up on the second."  She looked at Raleigh, who was still next to the chair with his head on Yancy's knee.  Yancy patted his head gently, wondering how bad that rabbit must have been for him.  The turmoil in the ghost drift wasn't a good sign.

_And how long until that's gone too and the only one ghost drifting with him is Jazz, not me?_ But his brother slowly pulled himself to sit upright again, and when he looked at Yancy, there was resolve in his eyes.  "You're trying again?"  Yancy asked.  Rals nodded.  Yancy forced down every selfish thought in his head, since there was no drift to worry about anymore.  Not for himself, anyway.  "Okay.  Then you both know I've got your backs.  Take this as far as you want to go."

* * *

_As far as we want to go.  How far do we want to go?_ Raleigh wondered.  In the Assembly Building's primary repair bay, he looked up at Gipsy.  She was covered head to toe in scaffolding, so mangled from Knifehead and her collapse on the beach.  _But she belongs to Yancy and me.  How can I go out in her with someone else?_

Why was he still thinking like this?  The medics, the psych analysts, and even Yancy had admitted the truth:  Ranger Yancy Becket was no more.  There was no point in wishing otherwise.  Yancy's back was broken, his pelvis and legs being held together by metal.  _You should suck it up, Rals, and be grateful he's alive.  Isn't reliving his death in the drift and making Jazz live through it enough to make you less selfish?_

Movement up on the catwalks caught his eye, and he blinked.  Up near the conn-pod... it was Jazmine, but she wasn't alone.  It took Raleigh a minute to recognize the ginger-haired boy as Chuck Hansen, Herc's son and new co-pilot.  _Declared Ranger Ready last summer at age sixteen, broke my record as the youngest qualified pilot._ Raleigh had seen Herc on and off as the Hansens bounced back and forth between Anchorage and Sydney, training and prepping for the launch of their new Mark-5, but he'd never met Chuck.

They looked a bit like siblings themselves, waiting side-by-side against the safety rail as Raleigh climbed up.  At least he didn't seem to have interrupted an interlude.  The thought made him smile.  "If my brother were here, he'd be bringing a shotgun," he informed Chuck.

That got him a loud snort from Jazmine.  "At least Yance thought I might have virtue worth protecting.  You were a lost cause by fourteen."

Hansen the Younger smirked.  "You must've been a late bloomer, Ray."

_And people said I was cocky._ Either that or Jazmine had tipped Chuck off that it annoyed her brother when people gave him shit about his name.  " _Ra_ leigh." 

"Whatever," said the kid.  Jazz snickered, and he gestured to her.  "I was just welcoming Volume Three here to the sequels club."

"I told him he's a little premature, after just one drift," Jazmine said.  "He's given us a vote of confidence."

"Drifting with your dad was that easy, huh?" said Raleigh.  Scuttlebutt had said that Herc and his son didn't get along so well, but it wouldn't be the first time that the rumor mill had been off.

Chuck shot him a _look._ "Drift compatibility's not some hoodoo destined soulmate thing, _Ranger._   You oughtta know that.  It's a choice.  Me and my old man weren't _first_ choice either way, but I wanted in and he didn't want out.  You fold now, you got no one to blame but yourself."  He tipped his Lucky Seven hat at Jazmine, in a pseudo-chivalrous gesture as if to let her know he had faith in her.  "Good luck, love."

Both Beckets watched him go, then Raleigh joined Jazmine at the rail, looking up at Gipsy's battered conn-pod.  _They haven't started repairs yet.  They must be waiting on us._ "You ready to try again?"

"Aussie Yoda over there says there is no try." 

Raleigh laughed out loud and looked down at the floor several hundred feet below.  Neither he nor his brother and sister had ever been afraid of heights.  When it came down to it, however much they'd fought as kids, he and Jazmine had their share of things in common.  They'd just always each had more in common with Yancy. 

Jazmine's hand came into his field of vision, open.  He reached out and took it.  _So neither of us would've been each other's first choice.  We can still make it work._

“You remember what you and Yance told me, after Yamarashi?”

Raleigh nodded. “You were what we were fighting for.” They’d meant it together even if Yancy had been the one to say it, and now that she’d drifted with Raleigh, Jazmine knew he’d meant it too.

“It’ll be the same now, except for Yance.”

He hadn’t really thought about it that way, but… it made sense. Perfect sense. They weren’t leaving him behind, and he’d see that no matter how long they drifted. The three of them would keep this going. Together. Even if there were only ever two of them in the conn-pod at a time. _  
_

* * *

_September 2021..._

The drift shimmered blue around them as they walked into the steel gray ocean, the steel of Portland's skyscrapers glittering at their back.  They were two-hundred-sixty feet tall, with muscles of steel fiber and skin of iron and a heart of nuclear fire.   
  
Voices rippled through their minds, past and present, every voice either one had ever heard, every thought they'd ever had.  Strongest out of those voices was their brother, who'd once occupied this same drift and this same body, whose echo still lived here with them even if his body was no longer in the conn-pod.  He was watching.  He would always be watching from LOCCENT.  He'd taken his first steps under his own power again even as Gipsy had taken hers under Raleigh and Jazmine’s shared command, six months ago, almost a year to the day after Knifehead.  There was a good symmetry to it all.

_"Target approaching the miracle mile,"_ announced Yancy. _"Striker Eureka touching down on your left."_

The Jaeger-to-Jaeger comm buzzed.  " _You awake in there, Ray?"_

Raleigh snorted.  "Ready to go, Junior, so worry about yourself."

" _Just don't forget who's in charge of this run,"_ Chuck retorted.

"It certainly isn't you!" Jazmine shot back.  (Technically, it was Herc as the most senior pilot, and they all knew it.)

" _Save it for after the kill, kids,"_ Yancy ordered.

_"Oh, we will,_ " said Herc.

* * *

**_Jaeger Victory Dance: Pelvic Thrusts and One-Finger Salutes?_ **

_Officials lauded the destruction of kaiju Spinejackal off the coast of Oregon on Friday, but educator groups protested the visible exchange of obscene gestures by Jaegers Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka in celebration of the victory!  PPDC officials reported that the four pilots, Raleigh and Jazmine Becket and Hercules and Charles Hansen, were reprimanded for their behavior, which in turn prompted a backlash by Jaeger Program supporters around the world._

_When asked by reporters if he had expected better behavior from his siblings, Yancy Becket burst into laughter, but made no comment._

_The mission commander, PPDC Marshal Stacker Pentecost, was heard to mutter that he does not get paid enough for this._

**_The End._ **

 


End file.
